The Secret To Booking More Weddings: Show Off Your Personality On Your Website With Andrea Shah

How do you showcase your personality in your wedding business without feeling unprofessional? In this episode, I’m joined by Andrea Shah, a website copywriter for wedding pros, to tackle that exact question.

We dive into why showing off your personality is key to building trust and connection with potential clients—especially Millennials and Gen Z couples who are all about personal connections with their vendors.

Andrea shares practical strategies that help you highlight your unique self in a way that feels authentic and resonates with your ideal clients. We’ll talk about balancing personal stories without oversharing, using humor and storytelling, and making your “About” page work harder to attract the right couples.

We also break down some common misconceptions around professionalism and why being yourself doesn’t mean you have to be stiff or formal.

You’ll learn how to use your voice, your quirks, and even pop culture references to stand out in a crowded market. If you want to attract the right clients by simply being yourself, this episode is for you!

In this episode we’ll cover:

• What it’s so important to showcase your personality on your website
• How showcasing your website builds trust
• What to include in your copy and how to include your personality
• Ways to infuse your About page with your personality
• The importance of brand voice
• Why you need to avoid going negative
• How to show your sense of humor
• What not to do on your About page
• How to determine what stories to tell in your marketing
• Why you need to use “you” more than “I”
• How people tamp down their personality in an effort to target luxury clients
• Results Andrea’s clients have had
• How personality-laden copy builds confidence and helps you stand out
• How to know when it’s time to rewrite your copy
• How to know if you’re ready to work with a copywriter like Andrea

The Secret To Booking More Weddings: Show Off Your Personality On Your Website With Andrea Shah

0:00:00 – Heidi Thompson
This is the Evolve Your Wedding Business Podcast, episode number 289. The secret to booking more weddings is all about you, your personality and your website.

0:00:13 – Intro
In a world where wedding professionals are struggling to market and grow their businesses, one podcast brings together top experts and actionable strategies to help you build the wedding business of your dreams. This is the Evolve your Wedding Business Podcast. Here is your host, Heidi Thompson.

0:00:44 – Heidi Thompson
Hello there, my friend, welcome to the podcast. I am your host, Heidi Thompson, and I am all about helping wedding professionals of all different kinds, just like you, book more weddings with the clients you absolutely love working with and building a business that gives you freedom and flexibility, and today’s topic is incredibly important to booking more weddings.

I’m really, really excited to have copywriter Andrea Shah on to talk about this, because we always hear that personality is important, that people do business with people they know, like and trust. We’ve heard these things, but we can kind of understand why it’s important to show personality, whether it’s on our website, on social media or anywhere else. But how, how does that actually work? What do we do in order to showcase personality and have it not come across like you don’t know what you’re doing, or you’re unprofessional, or it’s cringy, it’s cheesy?

I know we all feel that way when we try to insert more of our personality into things, when we try to insert more of our personality into things, and it’s why I got really excited when Andrea proposed talking about this, because we know that when we showcase our personality, it builds trust. We just know that that’s just a fact that has been researched for decades, know that. That’s just a fact that has been researched for decades. We also know that the buying ecosystem right now is experiencing a little bit of a trust void and that people are shopping around more.

People are more skeptical and ever since millennials really became the main market for weddings, we’ve seen a big shift toward wanting to like your vendors, wanting to feel personally connected to your vendors, and we’re definitely seeing that increase with Gen Z. I feel like most trends that we saw in the way that millennials buy are just amplified by Gen Z, and wanting to know and like and wanting to actually understand the person behind the business that you’re doing business with is really important for both of those generations and it’s really important for building trust.

But the question that remains is how the hell are you supposed to do that? And that is what Andrea is joining me today to talk about. I’m so excited to dive into this topic. I think you are going to get a ton out of it. So let’s get into my interview with copywriter extraordinaire Andrea Shah.

Today I’m joined by Andrea Shah, who is a website copywriter for wedding pros who want to solve their positioning problems and book clients they love at sustainable rates, and today she’s here to talk to us about showcasing your personality on your website, something I know a lot of us struggle with, because it’s like do people really care? What do I even say? How do I make this happen? So, Andrea, thank you so much for joining me.

0:04:21 – Andrea Shah
You’re welcome. I’m so excited to be here.

0:04:30 – Heidi Thompson
You’re welcome. I’m so excited to be here. So let’s start with people thinking that this maybe isn’t so important, that people don’t actually care about your personality. What would you say to that?

0:04:40 – Andrea Shah
It’s completely not true. Your personality, especially as a wedding professional, is so critical to helping people book you.

I have a friend who’s also a copywriter, who got married earlier this year and she sent a great email out to her list that really kind of honed in on this point. She said I’m spending all day at my wedding with a number of these people other people maybe they’re not there all day, but they’re going to be there at really key points of the day or leading up when it’s a stressful time.

She’s like the last thing I need to be worrying about is whether I’m going to feel awkward or like I don’t vibe with them or like somehow my wedding, the outcome of it, is being affected because I just don’t quite mesh with somebody. So she said personality was the number one thing she was looking for, just to make sure that after after, of course, the quality of someone’s work, your personality is really what helps people feel comfortable with you. Emotions run high on a wedding day, there’s a lot of stress and they want to feel like they’re going to be at home with you.

0:05:40 – Heidi Thompson
I think something a lot of people discount is the role that personality plays in building trust. And I was just doing an interview the other day and the person brought up the fact that they had just gone through this process of getting married and they’re a brand designer. So of course it was like a very interesting perspective. But she was saying, like some people made it so hard to get to know who they were, so it was more difficult to feel like they were someone you could trust.

0:06:14 – Andrea Shah
Yeah, and trust is so important for your wedding day because, like I said, you might have to explain family dynamics to your wedding vendor or you might you know they’re going to be seeing you getting dressed in some cases if they’re your photographer. You really want to feel like you’re at home with somebody, like you can trust them with the little things that are going to make your wedding run really smoothly and have you looking back and saying, wow, that was exactly the day I wanted. Everything went off really well.

0:06:48 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, I think we, because we do this every day, we forget just how much of a leap of faith it is, how much trust you have to put in someone to pull off your wedding. And it can be really daunting, it can be really scary, and I think we really underestimate the importance of just like human to human connection.

0:07:07 – Andrea Shah
Yes, just feeling like there is another person. Either they’ve been through what you’re going through or they know how you feel because they’ve got the experience. They’ve been dealing with weddings for a long time and they know how to handle anything that’s thrown at them. And yeah, you just want to feel like someone’s a human. You want to show people.

I’ve just been writing a site for a wedding photographer and we’re showing people the little details of her life a little tiny peek at her family, a peek at what she’d serve you if she had you over for dinner, a peek at what’s on her to watch list, so that you get a sense of her as a person and she doesn’t feel like a stranger. And part of that is in your sales process. You want someone to get on a call with you and feel like they already know you a little bit and feel like they’re psyched to work with you and you just kind of have to nudge them, explain what you do in your packages. But they’re not coming in saying, okay, convince me. They’re coming in and saying, oh yeah, I know you. I feel like you’re someone I could work with.

0:08:09 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, yeah, and I think we we rely too much on like that logical side of selling, which of course, we’re thinking about because we’re the business owner. We’re not the one experiencing all of these emotions and all of these things that are happening, you know, like you said, with family dynamics and all that super fun stuff. So I’m curious, when you do work with clients on this, what are some ways that you are figuring out what pieces of their personality to bring? Because I think that’s a big struggle. It’s like, well, what do you want to know? What is going to be helpful to include?

0:08:47 – Andrea Shah
Yeah, and I think part of it is figuring out how someone literally interacts with their clients on the day of what aspects, what kind of? What are the pillars of their brand? How do they serve people? How did they want to come across? And then it’s also about you have that broader topic of how you serve your clients, what’s your process like? And then you dig deeper also into the little details, and sprinkling those little details through is the thing that makes you relatable. It’s the thing that makes people kind of recognize. Maybe they see some of themselves in you. Maybe they aren’t exactly the same as you, but you also stick in someone’s mind a little bit and they say, oh yeah, that’s the person who likes to read romance novels, that’s the person who has a pet bunny rabbit, like whatever the weird sticky little detail is. Sometimes those things count for a lot.

0:09:41 – Heidi Thompson
So where are you weaving these things into the copy, or is it just kind of throughout?

0:10:06 – Andrea Shah
Make it into a little fun element that covers one a little bit of your biography, but then to something that is fun, whether it’s a quiz type element or just some fun facts or anything along those lines. We do want some of that, though, also on the homepage and even maybe on your packages pages, to just continue to use the language that you use so that it’s consistent throughout your site and maybe the type of references that you use. We want a real, consistent voice. We want your personality to shine through. We don’t want an about page that’s super in your voice, very casual, and then the rest of your website copy is kind of stiff and formal. Once we settle on a brand voice and a style of messaging, we really want to lean into that throughout your website and seize on those little details and sprinkle them in wherever we can.

0:10:49 – Heidi Thompson
How do you help people kind of lock into that brand voice so that either you know they can write in it or you can write in it?

0:10:59 – Andrea Shah
It’s a lot of questions is the main thing.

So I have a questionnaire where I ask people all kinds of questions. That might seem a little bit silly but they’re just kind of designed to get you thinking about your business in a way that you might not have thought about it before. But then the other thing is, as a writer, I go and I read everything you’ve written and I listen to you talk in an interview not so different from this, and it’s a lot of listening and absorbing and figuring out on the flip side, what is your audience going to relate to.

So, depending on the kind of work that you do and the kind of clients you want to serve, what aspects of your personality are going to be the most relatable and what ones are things that are cool and they’re relevant to you but they’re not necessarily going to resonate with your people. So you do also have to do some research and some thinking about your ideal couples, your ideal clients and what they might need to hear from you and what sort of personality they might be looking for.

0:11:58 – Heidi Thompson
What I’m hearing is you are really like engineering this as a point of connection. So it’s not just like we’re not just throwing random, you know facts about ourself out there. That’s not going to accomplish this. What we’re doing instead is looking at, okay, who are your people and who are you, and kind of like, what’s that Venn diagram and how can we really highlight that in the person?

0:12:24 – Andrea Shah
The diagram analogy is perfect.

That is exactly it, and I mean I hate to be like every other marketing person and say that you have to know who your ideal people are, but you have to have an idea of who you want to talk to and you have to think about what they need to hear from you because ultimately, your website copy, just like your branding, just like your social media content, it has to be directed at a specific type of person and there’s all kinds of ways to think about types of people.

It doesn’t necessarily mean need to be you know Becky and John who live in Iowa city and work in such and such industry. That’s not necessarily the way we need to think about it. Some of that information may or may not be relevant, but it also may be the type of wedding your couple is having, the sort of feelings they want. It might just be like the style of wedding that they want, you know. Do they want an elegant and formal wedding? Do they want something casual? Do they want something punk rock? There’s 50 different ways, a hundred different ways to have a wedding, and you need to be thinking also more deeply about what’s going to appeal to them.

0:13:30 – Heidi Thompson
That’s a really good point, because I think it’s very easy, when you hear you know you need to show more of your personality, that you just start throwing stuff out there or worse, you just start kind of like airing your dirty laundry in the hopes of being relatable. But if that doesn’t align with your people, it’s not going to work. It’s not just this throw random things out there. It has to be carefully considered.

0:13:57 – Andrea Shah
Yes, and I say especially going off of that. One thing I think is easy to kind of be trapped into doing. That I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is talking about your own clients that are less than ideal, and I think sometimes people get this idea because you see coaches and people who are teaching you how to scale your business and they’re talking about red flag clients and that sort of thing and they create content around this.

And I think a lot of people respond to that by thinking they should create their own content around that and talk about that. And the reality of it is that for most of us who work one-to-one with people, that’s something you kind of want to stay away from. You don’t want to overshare about yourself and you don’t want to lean too hard into the type of clients you don’t want to work with or red flags, because that can be kind of a turnoff for some people.

0:14:43 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, that’s a really good point and I’ve definitely seen that. I’ve seen people go too far into like picking on a certain type of client and it’s like that that’s going to backfire. That’s not going to look good. Even if you know that’s not the type of client that’s seeing it, it’s still not a good look to be seen as talking down about your clients.

0:15:10 – Andrea Shah
Save it for the group chat, save it for your partner over a glass of wine when you go home at night, but like, don’t, there was a trend at the beginning of 2023. I saw an Instagram where a lot of vendors were talking about like things that are out for 2023. And it rubbed some people really the wrong way because, while it’s a good way to show kind of your personal taste and that sort of thing, on the flip side a lot of people were like, okay, but I don’t want to give up a father daughter dance. Or oh, I had planned on having matching bridesmaids dresses. Are you telling me now I’m uncool and I’m out? So that sort of thing can rebound on you in a way that’s maybe not ideal.

0:15:50 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, that’s really. I’m really glad you brought that up, because I have seen that and I’m sure it comes from a place of like I, like this is going to be relatable, but it just doesn’t land that way. Like you said, when it’s when your audience is your clients and you’re not having like a business to business conversation, it’s just a very, very different tone.

0:16:14 – Andrea Shah
Yes, and I would flip it around and say if you want to show your sense of humor, the best way is to make fun of yourself, poke fun gently at yourself a little bit, like I’ve seen some photographers create reels where they show the pictures you know, the finished product pictures and then in between they intersperse images of the position they were in to get those pictures. And it’s great content because it’s joking about themselves, it’s showing a little behind the scenes, a lot of personality, but it’s not making fun of the couples, it’s making fun of themselves as they contort themselves into these hilarious positions. So I’m a self-deprecating person but my advice is almost always that if you want to add a little bit of a sense of humor in there, turn the joke around on yourself a little bit.

0:17:00 – Heidi Thompson
That’s a great piece of advice and it’s something any of us can do. A little bit. That’s a great piece of advice and it’s something any of us can do. Something you had mentioned is really like the about page is a great way to show personality. I feel like about pages is a place where everybody gets stuck because they feel like, okay, I’ll have my bio and maybe a photo sometimes not even a photo, which is a whole other thing. What do people really need to be thinking about there to pull out the pieces of their personality, but also to have an effective about page and I’m sure we could probably talk about this alone for an hour, but it just seems to be that page where it’s like what do I do with this?

0:17:46 – Andrea Shah
seems to be that page where it’s like what do I do with this? Yeah, and I think it’s easy to there. I mean, there’s a couple of bad paths People tend to go down. One is the path of like writing it like a CV, which it isn’t. It’s not a job application, it’s not a CV. That’s when you don’t show enough personality.

I also do see there’s a lot of industry leaders in the wedding industry who have super bare bones about pages. It’s got maybe a picture of them and then like a one paragraph bio written in third person, and they’re getting away with that because they’re not booking clients through their website, they’re not stressed about SEO, they’re getting clients through word of mouth and planners and all that sort of stuff, which is phenomenal for them. But it won’t work if you’re at a more beginner level in your business even I mean even to an intermediate level in your business and you need people to know about you.

You need some SEO value on that page. So that’s another strategy I don’t recommend. Instead, you want to start usually with a story that tells a little bit about your experience and why you’ve chosen to serve the clients you serve. Maybe relates to the difficulty that they’re having in choosing a photographer or in deciding whether or not to have a photo booth at their wedding or whatever it is that you do, and then kind of gradually transition into a bio of yourself, but write it in first person, be laid back.

If you have a team, I like to do like a note from the founder that’s in first person, or a note from the CEO, whatever your title is, and then little bios of the team, but don’t make them dry. Do this is so-and-so’s title and this is her favorite cocktail, or this is his favorite Netflix show. Whatever you want to do, but keep it really light. The other thing is on your about page is where you want to do, but keep it really light. The other thing is on your about page is where you get to take advantage of all the nice stuff people have said about you or one of the places, so you can put things like podcasts.

You’ve appeared on places, your work has been published. You know if you’re a photographer and you’ve been on Green Wedding Shoes and Style Me Pretty, you want to throw those icons on your about page so you can add a little social proof in there too. But I always like to start with a story, a little bit of storytelling that really puts the focus. Even though it’s the about page, it puts the focus on the couple or the individual who’s reading the page and gets them to think about how you relate to them.

0:20:00 – Heidi Thompson
I think that’s the thing that trips people up is we get into this headspace of it’s an about page, it’s about me, it’s about the business, but really what we have to do is kind of flip it around and connect the about you to what the client cares about, and that’s something I think a lot of people are not familiar with.

0:20:21 – Andrea Shah
Yes, I agree, and I think that is ultimately the tactic for people and it it’s a challenge I’m not here, I’m kind of throwing down the gauntlet a little bit, like it’s tough to do that. You need to think carefully about the stories that you can tell about your business that someone’s going to relate to. For some people that might be the story of their own wedding. For other people that might be the story of how they got into flowers or how they got into baking or whatever. But you need to tie it to the need that people are seeing and the need that they want you to meet, and that’s a little bit different for different types of businesses too. I do want to say in the wedding industry there’s a difference between the kind of vendors that people know they really want they’re 99% sure they’re going to book someone and the kind of vendors who occupy a space where someone might go without and you need to tailor your storytelling accordingly.

The example I usually give is wedding photographers usually don’t have to sell people on the importance of wedding photography and why you’re going to want photos to look back at. They’re more focused on showing why they are the specific photographer for someone. On the flip side, you have these people that have popped up in the past year or two and they call themselves, like, wedding content creators, and it’s the person who comes in and films your wedding for Instagram and TikTok and creates this immediate content that can go up on social media. That person has to do a little bit more of like. This is what I do, and here’s why you might want to hire me, and this is the experience I create, as opposed to someone where it’s like, well, yeah, of course, we’ll have a wedding photographer. We who wouldn’t want a wedding photographer?

0:21:56 – Heidi Thompson
That’s a really good point because it really speaks to the level of awareness that your person is at Like. Do they know that your service exists? Do they see it as a possibility or a must have? Do they see it as a priority? And then making those decisions from there, as opposed to like blanket advice, like include, this kind of thing, that makes a lot more sense because you are meeting them exactly where they are and those people are in two completely different spaces of understanding why they would want to work with that person.

0:22:34 – Andrea Shah
Exactly, and I think most wedding vendors are going to fall in category A, where people know that they need a caterer. If they’re going to serve a dinner, they need a um, they need a photographer, they need a caterer. If they’re going to serve a dinner, they need a photographer, they need a venue. But there are other categories I can say, like videographers might still be for some people category B, where they need to talk a little bit more about the importance of videography. Or you know, say you do candy tables for a wedding and I’m probably dating myself because that was a huge trend when I got married years ago. That might be something you need to convince people of, why they would hire this separate vendor to come in and do something that maybe they’ve never heard of before. And you might be aiming more in that category for the wow, look at this cool, surprising thing you can do at your wedding that your friends aren’t expecting sort of deal.

0:23:19 – Heidi Thompson
That makes a lot of sense.

0:23:40 – Andrea Shah
That makes a lot of sense. Where do you see people to focusing using the word I? Because you’re trying to express yourself and talk about your personality. Your personality is more than actually talking about you. It’s also the language you use, the pop culture references. You use the things that you value. That can come through, even when you’re using the word you to talk to the client about their vision of their wedding day, even when you’re using the word you to talk to the client about their vision of their wedding day. And so the trick is to remember that your personality comes through even when you’re not saying I do this and I do that. You’re really focused on them. But you think about the language you use, you and I.

For example, Heidi, we probably use different expressions in our everyday life. We probably have different ways that we express surprise or frustration. We probably have different ways that we express surprise or frustration, different adjectives that we use to say that something is fantastic or phenomenal or amazing, whatever, and so that language alone is a big part of your personality. The little expressions what’s your thing, heidi, like? What’s your pop culture touchstone?

0:24:44 – Heidi Thompson
I use a lot of 30 Rock. I use a lot of. I use a bit of Schitt’s Creek, but I use a lot of 30 Rock.

0:24:49 – Andrea Shah
There you go. See, I would not be a Schitt’s Creek person, for example, and I’m, you know, kind of sad to admit this because, like I feel like all my friends are Schitt’s Creek people and they’re probably like cringing as I say this, I’m much more of a Succession person. So, like it sounds silly, but getting those references right is a way of showing your personality, you know, it’s why I always ask my clients the stupid pop culture questions Like what is your thing? What am I going to hear you talking about all the time? Because that’s a way of showing your personality, even when you’re addressing your copy to your ideal couples.

0:25:22 – Heidi Thompson
Because that’s a way of showing your personality even when you’re addressing your copy to your ideal couples. Yeah, that’s a really good point. And just the other day, like, I used a SpongeBob GIF and something and it was like I was actually weirdly aware of this without being fully aware of it, of like, okay, that’s a choice a lot of people wouldn’t make, but it works for me, so I’m going to go for it.

0:25:42 – Andrea Shah
It works for me, so I’m going to go for it.

Oh well, I think you said you kind of got to the heart of it right there about personality is when you say that’s a choice a lot of people wouldn’t make, but it works for me.

I think that is so important because, at the end of the day, unless you are the only person doing your thing in a small town for like a three hour radius and you’re already booked up for however many weddings a year for five years in the future, you can’t work with everyone, and it is okay for you to put your personality in your copy and for some people to be like you know what, that’s not my vibe, and they peace out and, frankly, a lot of times, if people’s copy is stiff and formal, they come to me and they tell me that they’re getting leads that they have to do a lot of convincing. They’re getting leads that they just don’t vibe with, and so you need to show your personality in a way that’s also going to make people who aren’t ideal clients for you say you know what? I’m going to move on to the next person, because there’s no shame in that whatsoever.

0:26:38 – Heidi Thompson
Do you find a lot of people go like the overly formal route and an attempt to be perceived as professional?

0:26:46 – Andrea Shah
Not just professional, although I think that’s part of it. I also feel like in the wedding industry there’s a desire to move into a higher tier market and a belief that to move into a higher tier market you have to sound a certain way. I’m not going to use the L word luxury because that’s such a complicated topic, but’m not going to use the L word luxury because that’s such a complicated topic. But in general, I think people often have the belief that if they want to charge more than they’re currently charging and serve a level of clients that pay more, maybe take fewer weddings, that they have to sound formal because that’s the vibe that people who are going to pay X amount for your services want. In reality, there are amazing people with a super relaxed vibe who are still charging quote unquote luxury prices for their service.

0:27:29 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, it’s funny that we get into this, this like mode of thinking, that there’s like one type of person that has this kind of money and that like it couldn’t be further from the truth, like having known people that have like worked closely with you know millionaires and billionaires, like they are the chillest t-shirts and shorts kind of people in the world, and it’s just really funny that like we have this. I think it’s probably an insecurity that comes out and it’s like you have to kind of like put on airs and like pretend you’re in a perfume commercial.

0:28:09 – Andrea Shah
Yeah, I mean, wasn’t it like Kourtney Kardashian, who is probably richer than like all of us put together, who had like a kind of a goth-y vibe for her wedding and that sort of thing? And I bet she didn’t hire a planner who was all airy and light, blues and whites on their websites and that sort of thing, because that wasn’t the vibe she was going for. And I feel like she would have looked and said probably not going to serve up what I want. You know, yeah, that’s a really interesting point, it was her.

0:28:35 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, I think we neglect to see people as like individuals that have different styles and different tastes and different like ways of being, and we see like a caricature that if someone is going to spend more money, they’re going to be like like hoity-toity about it. Which like do you?

0:28:55 – Andrea Shah
want some great coupons sort of deal like yeah, yeah, no. I definitely think that we believe that way and I think, in reality, there are lots of different types of high end. There are different types of luxury. Whatever market you’re serving, there’s room for you to be yourself.

I do think there is an impulse also to take a little bit of personality out of it, to, like you said, sound professional. I find that professional is so much more about the client experience you offer and the quality of the work that you do, and less about your actual personality. Like there are people who swear like a sailor and are still super professional in the sense of like, as long as you vibe with them, they will get the work done, they will deliver amazing work, they will respond to your emails, whatever it is. But that’s their personality. And yeah, you don’t. To me, professionalism and personality are two fairly separate things. Now, if you curse all over your website, you’re probably not going to attract some people, but then again, if you curse all the time, do you want the sort of people who are offended by cursing?

0:29:57 – Heidi Thompson
Probably not yeah, that’s just going to be a bad experience.

0:30:02 – Andrea Shah
Yeah, it’s not a match on either side. It’s so often not just about your time and energy either, although that’s important. It’s also about their time and energy, and if you’re not presenting yourself in a way that’s true to who you actually are, they might get on a sales call and they’ll be like, oh, the vibe is totally different than I got from the website, and then they might not book with you. And we want to cut down on unnecessary sales calls and that sort of thing and really reserve your energy and your time for the clients who are going to be a good fit for you.

0:30:28 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, yeah. What changes do you see happen for you know, your clients who may come to you, you know not having much of this worked into their copy, and then when they leave and they have this copy, that’s just like dripping with their brand and their personality. What does that look like for them?

0:30:50 – Andrea Shah
I think a huge part of it is just wanting to send people to your website. You know feeling hyped when you send people to your website. Like this person is going to be thrilled to see it. It showcases the best of me as you grow your business. I think a website that sounds like you, that really reflects the caliber of the work that you do. I think it can also be advantageous when it comes to getting on bigger stages.

So maybe you’re looking for more opportunities to be published or appear on podcasts or speak at conferences, run workshops, all of those sorts of things. When you have this phenomenal website that represents you, that’s another thing you have the confidence to do, and really that’s what I want for my clients. Of course, I want them to book the right kind of clients for them at a price that makes their life workable, but I also want them to feel really confident in their business and their brand and feel like. I want them to feel like they’ve been seen a little bit. I know that that’s a cliche, but I also want them to feel like someone came into their business and helped really pick out the things that they excel at and showcase them on their site so that they know the best of them is on display.

0:31:55 – Heidi Thompson
I have had that experience myself with my website, which I only had for like a year. Maybe it is so perfectly honed into me and my brand and my ideal client but it’s not standing out in the way that this one really is and there are so many components to that. I learned through that process of you know color and photos and copy and font and the way that you are presenting things and it just makes such a difference in the way that you’re perceived.

0:32:40 – Andrea Shah
Yes, and then just making you stand out too. It’s. I do find that the wedding industry there’s sometimes a little bit of like there can be a similar note to a lot of stuff and you know there’s some branding that looks similar and that sort of thing. And I think if you can really nudge yourself outside of your comfort zone because a lot of times it is about that, it’s about not doing the thing that everyone else is doing and doing something a little bit different, that will make you stand out. It can have really big results for your business.

0:33:11 – Heidi Thompson
What would you say would be a good first step for someone who wants to incorporate more of their personality into their website?

0:33:21 – Andrea Shah
The first step, I always tell everyone, is go and sit and read your website aloud to yourself.

You’re going to hate me for this tip. It’s not a fun tip. Nobody likes this tip. But go and read it aloud to yourself and think about would I really say all of this? Find the phrasing that you’re like Ooh, that’s not me, that’s not the way I talk. Find the phrasing that you’re like that’s a little awkward when I hear myself say that. I’m like I could find a better way to do that. And then, um, go back in and make some tweaks based on that. And the other thing I would recommend is just add a little bit of an extra layer of detail in there. Wherever you can add a little bit of extra detail.

When you’re talking, especially like sensory detail, where you talk about capturing certain moments and that sort of thing go one level of detail below where you normally go, because most of us we think we’re doing detail and it’s really still pretty surface level. Yeah, the most interesting weddings you’ve served, the most unusual moments you’ve had, think about the vibe that you pick up and try to weave some of that detail in a little bit, even if it’s a really quirky detail.

I just did a website for a husband and wife photographer couple and I asked them give me your weirdest wedding moments. Give me your most interesting wedding moments. What has your most interesting wedding moments? What has stuck in your head? And they told me at one point they were doing he was doing photographs with the groomsmen before the ceremony and they were in a public park and it started snowing and as they were walking back to their cars the groomsmen noticed a Zumba class that was going on in the park and they joined in and they got these photos of these groomsmen with the regular Zumba students in the snow and it’s just like such a wacky, fun, weird moment.

But it stands out because I could never have invented that myself. If you’d asked me to come up with it, I never would have come up with anything as good and you better believe that made that onto the site. So, yeah, sometimes just going to the little weird details, a little bit about what you’ve done and the sensory detail. There’s a copywriter I love. I want to give credit to her.

Her name’s Zafira Rajan and she talks a lot about sensory storytelling, using the five senses, thinking about, and weddings are great for this, because there is so much sight and sound, but there is also taste and smell and all of that the smell of a bouquet, the taste of the cake you and smell, and all of that, the smell of a bouquet, the taste of the cake you can really invoke those five senses too.

That was like three tips, so I apologize. No, I love it.

0:35:46 – Heidi Thompson
Three tips into one, that those are really really good starting points. Um, I’m curious have you ever seen like the other end of the spectrum? So I think you and I both probably see a lot of lack of personality. Have you seen people like go way too far just like talking about themselves, that it doesn’t land?

0:36:09 – Andrea Shah
I think you can. I think you can talk too much about yourself and your experience, um, without focusing. You know it’s that I versus you sort of thing again, and I think you need to rein it back a little bit and and and try not to lean into that Again. There’s probably going to be some people that you can dial your personality up to a 14 on a scale of one to 10, and it’ll resonate with them. But you do also have to think about your ideal clients a little bit. And are you, are your leads that you get, matching the kind of people you want to work with? If not, there’s often a mismatch.

0:36:46 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, do you typically see a mismatch between, like who someone is on the page and who someone is in a sales call, or how are your clients experiencing that?

0:36:57 – Andrea Shah
I do think sometimes people come to me because they feel like they want to. They feel like their business has grown. So usually when people come to me, when they want a copywriter for a full site rewrite, they wrote their copy at an earlier stage of their business. They wanted to show their personality, but now they’re struggling with the problem of I’m charging higher prices. I may be serving a different level of client, I have more experience. How do I weave all of that together and sound polished but still have personality? You know, especially like some of the people that come to me, they’re starting a podcast. They are looking to step onto those bigger stages and so they want a little bit more of a polished format without losing their sense of self.

0:37:41 – Heidi Thompson
I love what you just said, polished, but with personality. I feel like sometimes people can see that as an either or, and it sounds like it really doesn’t have to be.

0:37:51 – Andrea Shah
No, it really doesn’t. It should be. Ideally it will be both. I mean there’s, you know, there’s people who can make unpolished work for them too, and usually, when you’ve DIY’d your copy, if you’re booking clients, that’s a good thing. If it’s where you need to evaluate when it’s time to rewrite your copy is, are you concerned that you’re not going to be able to book the clients you want if you raise your prices? Or are you doing a pivot in your business?

And, like I said, I do have people who also come in and they say you know, I wrote this copy three years ago. I’ve grown up since then, especially people who started their businesses at a younger age. It’s a lot of I’ve grown up. I’ve learned a lot of things. How can I keep myself in the copy and still reflect the more experienced business person I am today?

0:38:36 – Heidi Thompson
I think a lot of it too is like so much of this stuff copy, brand is. It’s so hard to do for yourself because you can’t remove yourself from the process. You can’t see it from that external lens, you can’t see the way other people see you. You’re like I don’t know, I’m just this person.

0:38:57 – Andrea Shah
But there’s nothing that’s special, it’s the seeing the label from inside the jar. You can’t do it. I am here to attest to the fact that I rewrote my own copy last year and it took me forever because I sat there and picked it every last little thing and then I sent it to some friends and they were like this is great, why are you stressing so much about it? But, like even to us copywriters, it happens, and that’s that’s one thing I want to. You know I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is sometimes a copywriter isn’t just a copywriter, much like a brand designer. They’re a strategist who comes in, takes a look at your business and sees the things about you that are unique and the way you work and how that’s unique. And they talk to your past clients and they figure out what your past clients are saying. Because sometimes we don’t want to reach out to our past clients and ask them candid questions about working with us, cause we’re terrified of what they’ll answer.

But if somebody else does it for us. It can give us so much insight into why people choose us, why people choose to work with us, that we didn’t otherwise have.

0:40:00 – Heidi Thompson
I have found that so interesting. When I have done it, when I’ve asked people why did they decide to work with me, I feel like at least half the time it’s something related to something that I take completely for granted, because it’s just a part of who I am, how I think, how I work. It’s just me, you know, and we don’t get to see those things unless we actually ask. But, like you said, sometimes it’s hard to be the one to ask those questions and it’s much, much easier and faster to bring in a third party who can look at this impartially and not like on the verge of some sort of existential crisis about who am I and what do I want to be in the world.

0:40:47 – Andrea Shah
Yes, exactly Exactly. The impartial third party is such an important part. I think it’s. I mean it cycles back to outsourcing so much of what you do in your business. Like the reason to outsource is sometimes just to get a new set of eyes on your business and someone I’ve done it myself, someone to tell you like yeah, what you’re doing is fine, Keep doing this, maybe change that up, and it’s like okay, and you feel so empowered, Whereas if you try to do it yourself, you just get in the weeds really fast.

0:41:16 – Heidi Thompson
How would you say someone can tell the difference between, like they are ready or they should work with someone like you on their copy, versus maybe they’re not quite there yet to that we can use for testimonials and that sort of thing.

0:41:41 – Andrea Shah
That’s really important. And the other most important thing is you want to have a pretty good idea of who you want to serve and what your offers are. If you feel like you are burning down your business and you want to try a totally different way of doing business, wait a little bit. Try new things out, make sure they work for you, make sure you’ve got an idea of what’s functioning, you’ve got examples of your work, and that’s when you bring a copywriter in. I definitely don’t recommend it for the very first phase of your business unless you know you’re really experienced. You’ve got some capital to start things up.

But in general, make sure you have a good handle on the basics of your business who you serve, what you do. Make sure you have a good handle on the basics of your business, who you serve, what you do. Give me people to talk to, and that’s kind of the number one thing. If you don’t have any of that, do DIY. It’s totally fine. There are people out there with amazing website guides that you can get that will help you DIY a website book. Your clients get busy and then, when you feel like it’s time to pivot in your business, or when you want to up-level a little bit. That’s when you bring on a copywriter.

0:42:40 – Heidi Thompson
I think that’s excellent advice because I think a lot of people may not think about the fact that you, as a copywriter, are going to go speak to their clients. So they need to have those people that you know you can tap into and you can ask questions of, so you can get a better feel. For, okay, who is this customer? Who are they trying to reach?

0:43:01 – Andrea Shah
Yes, and I would tell anyone out there if you are thinking of hiring a copywriter, say, in the next six months to one year, if you’re doing that, start thinking about a way to collect feedback from your client now that you can share with them, especially because for a lot of people you know, if you have a busy season, it’s way easier if you build it into your process to ask people for feedback and then when you do hire a copywriter, maybe in your quiet season, you’re not going back to people you worked with six months prior and asking them for feedback. They give their feedback when it’s relatively fresh in their mind. So set up a way to get you know testimonials or something like that from people. If you use a CRM, there’s pretty easy ways to create a form and automate an email that goes out to your clients, maybe a couple of weeks after their wedding or whatever. But try to get fresh feedback from them, because that is a goldmine for a copywriter. So if you’re thinking about having someone come in, that’s something you want to do.

0:43:56 – Heidi Thompson
Having gone through a rebrand myself and all fresh copy, I could tell you that is the most important piece, that is the most just gold mine of information that, like, they can dig into, because I was just able to you know when asked. You know what does your customer say about their experience with you? Or what is your customer looking for Like here are these survey results. Here are these survey results. Here’s the transcript from this interview. Here’s this, here’s this, here’s this. Have at it. And I got to just hand all of that over and not have to try to like hum and haw about okay, how do I describe this person? They can do it themselves.

0:44:41 – Andrea Shah
Exactly and you want to. When you request feedback from your people too, you can ask questions that they might not include the answer to in their Google review, because a lot of them will give you, like, a nice review on Google or Yelp or WeddingWire or whatever. But you can also ask them a couple of questions that might not make it in there. Things like why did you choose to work with me over somebody else? You know, if you’re a florist, why did you choose to work with me over other florists in the area? What was your initial feeling when you saw the florals for your wedding? If you can ask a couple of specific questions like that, that might not be something that makes it into their reviews. That can be all the more beneficial Because, of course, your copywriter is also going to look at their reviews, but a lot of times, reviews aren’t necessarily written with creating great website copy in mind.

0:45:31 – Heidi Thompson
Yeah, they want to be nice. They don’t necessarily know what you need. So I think following up with those questions is incredibly helpful because it gives you that, that psychological backing of like what was the rationale behind all of these different decisions that you made.

0:45:47 – Andrea Shah
Yeah, and it’s really. It’s understanding the type of decision maker that you’re working with and what they knew about. Your service goes back to those stages of awareness and those types of buyers that are really important when you’re creating this online presence and thinking about how to communicate with your people. So the more data you can get, the better. As boring as it is, it’s the secret to really good copy. It is.

0:46:12 – Heidi Thompson
Andrea, this has been fantastic. You’ve given us some really good places to start, some really good things to think about. Where should people go if they want to connect with you, if they want to work with you or just chat with you further?

0:46:26 – Andrea Shah
Sure, my website is andreashawcom. It’s not especially creative, but there you have it. And then I’m also always on Instagram, to my dismay at andreashawcopy. So come find me, hop in the DMs there. I’d love to talk.

0:46:42 – Heidi Thompson
Fantastic. Thank you so much. I will be sure to link to those in the show notes. And, andrea, thank you again for joining me.

0:46:49 – Andrea Shah
Thank you for having me, it was great.

0:46:51 – Heidi Thompson
I hope that’s given you some ideas about things you can change on your website right away to bring in more of who you are and your personality and the pop culture references that you use. And it’s really interesting to see, as Andrea said, that a lot of people tamp down their personality in an effort to target luxury clients or people they perceive to have a certain level of income, as if those people don’t also like nerding out about certain things and like to know who the person is that they work with.

It’s so important to stand out, and personality is one of those ways that you can really stand out and it can’t be copied, because you are the only person that talks like you, that uses the references that you do, that sounds like you, that acts the way that you do. It’s one of those things that is, you just can’t replicate it in the same way that someone else could replicate. You know your business model or your, the visual brand that you have or the way that you market. So I hope this has inspired you and I hope this has given you you know some steps to take.

I think a really great first step for you would be to go through The Stand Out and Get Booked Challenge that I have available at the Wedding Business Shop. It’s over at weddingbusinessshop.com. You’ll be able to find it there. It’s super cheap it’s like nine bucks and if you’re listening to this, the week it comes out, it’s on sale currently, so that is going to help you start pulling out.

What are these things about you that your people love, that they notice, that they want to see more of, quite frankly, and that you can use in your marketing to draw more people to you. So I’ll be sure to link to that in the show notes. You can also just go directly to weddingbusinessshop.com and find the challenge in the shop there, as well as lots of other trainings and resources that I have.

But I would love to hear what you learned from this. I’d love to hear what you’re going to implement. Shoot me a DM. I am evolveyourweddingbusiness on Instagram and, like I said, I will have everything linked up for this episode in the show notes. Thank you so much for taking the time to tune in and I will speak to you again very soon.

About Andrea Shah

Andrea Shah is a copywriter for wedding creatives and educators who want copy that matches their high-end branding and client experience while capturing what’s truly unique about their work.

Before becoming a copywriter, she used her experience coding websites to land a job with a website translation agency, where she learned from some of the biggest companies in the world about SEO, user experience, brand voice, and sales. Today, she applies those same techniques to craft sites that sell for her wedding-industry clients.

When she clocks out for the day, you’ll find Andrea doing jigsaw puzzles, coloring with her daughter, and trying new cake recipes. If she’s not at her home in Florida, she’s probably in France, sampling all the pastries she can get her hands on.

Website: www.andreashah.com
Instagram: @andreashahcopy

 

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Links & Resources:

The Wedding Business Collective
The Stand Out & Get Booked Challenge
Episode 127: How Copywriting Can Help You Book More Weddings with Ashlyn Carter
Website Mistakes That Cost You Bookings: Expert Advice from Designer & Bride Emily Foster

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